


Mean Girls

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Humanstuck, an au of echoes of angels, and nobody gets murdered, genderbent troll cast, in which eridan and sollux just hook up, other pairings mentioned offhand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>abandoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time you sleep with Sollux Captor it's kind of a mistake.  You're at a party.  You're really fucking drunk, and looking to get laid by something braggably attractive.  The bass line is making the floor pulse and even when you lock yourself in the bathroom for a few minutes to re-apply your makeup and finish your bottle of wine sans interruption, it's too loud for you to hear yourself cry.  So that's a bonus.  No one else can hear you, either.  
  
Vriska hasn't texted you in two weeks.  You hear he's hooked up with a girl in a wheelchair.  You hear she's got a massive rack and a sweet, gentle disposition and they met at PT for amputees, and also you hear that Vriska changed his number, and no one will give you his new one, because apparently Vriska is done with you and that's that.  
  
Feferi isn't returning your calls, texts, or emails.  You wish he were dead.  You also wish that Vriska were dead, preferably in another motorcycle accident.  You wish you were dead, too, but mostly you wish other people were dead, because other people deserve it more.  
  
Apparently Vriska said you were a frigid bitch.  
  
You really, really wish Vriska were dead.  
  
Anyway, one thing leads to another, and Sollux is at this party because Karkat needs moral support against the Pyrope-Strider-Egbert triple threat, and so instead of doing shots off a willing frat boy's chiseled abdomen you end up picking a fight with her.  And instead of inviting strange boys to put their hands up your shirt, you sort of try to punch Sollux in the boobs (because she called you a pancake), and it turns out she isn't wearing a bra, her breasts are just like that.  And your hands sort of ... linger.  Your body alcohol levels are diluted with a little bit of blood, but not much.  
  
She tells you you're getting a reputation for whorishness.  (She may have used the phrase "clown car vagina".)  You tell her boo hoo, sour grapes.  (You may have told her her vagina was a forgotten crypt, populated only by skeletons and cobwebs.)  And then she pulls your hair and you snarl and lunge and then you're sort of making out, and after a few minutes of tonsil hockey she drags you upstairs and into a narrow bedroom and locks the door on the third try.  (She may have been absolutely smashed off her ass.)    
  
And she kisses you like she wants to make you repent all your transgressions, and you tackle each other to the bed and rip each other's clothes off with extreme prejudice, and then when you wake up the next morning you have a screaming hangover, six hickeys, and a split lip, and Sollux is gone.  
  
The second time you fuck Sollux is a little more complicated.  
  
You score with two brain-dead himbos, in the interim, and they're pretty good at it, and you definitely enjoy them, but there's something subtly off.  Nipples confuse them, breasts are a foreign language, and although they make a sporting attempt at eating you out, they both approach your vagina like they're facing a difficult maths exam.  It's really very boring until they stick it in, and it leaves you wondering why you bother.    
  
Sex with Vriska was never this dull, but then again, sex with Vriska involved things like watching him beat the shit out of drug dealers in alleyways, holding wallets while he menaced people with a switchblade, running from police sirens, and then getting fucked from behind over the seat of his bike.  Vriska, you are coming to suspect, is a bad idea, and also maybe criminally insane.  Exciting, in an adrenaline-fuelled sexual nightmare sort of way, but dangerous.  
  
You miss him horribly, but you're definitely not as hung up about it.  
  
So you're pleased.  You no longer want everyone in the world to die a fiery death and you're slowly getting over the trauma of being dumped by a virginity-stealing psychopath, but you're understandably a little pissed off about the Captor-shaped wrench in the gears of your heterosexuality.    
  
Karkat tells you to stop talking to her about it, for fuck's sake.  Kanaya tells you you need to stop waking him up at two in the morning and also that you still can't have Vriska's number. Rose tells you to get out of Kanaya's room before she puts out your eyes with a crochet hook.  The world is against you.  
  
And it's fucking difficult to focus on your coursework with all this going on and no one wanting to talk to you about it, and your GPA starts to slip, and you get angry.  Who wouldn't be angry?  
  
So you confront Sollux in the dining hall and publicly ask her just what the fuck her deal is.  She stops eating her pasta and stares at you.  Lots of other people also stop eating their pasta, and chicken parmesan, and overcooked cafeteria string beans.  You accuse her of three types of sex crime.  You tell her that if this was an elaborate plot to fuck with your grades so she can stay top student in your year, she has another thought coming.  You call her a devious bitch and imply that she makes a habit out of seducing and ruining innocent women.  
  
After a few moments of stunned silence, Sollux drags you into a coatroom by your ear, slams the door, and backhands you.  You howl and kick her in the shins.  She starts shouting at you, telling you off, gesturing furiously.  
  
And in the process of telling you exactly why you are a horrid bitch, she shoves you up against the wall, and you're stupidly turned on and you end up making out again, and it's even better than when you were too drunk to remember your area code.  
  
Because something sort of clicks.  
  
And you have your hands tangled in her hair and a leg hooked behind her waist and you are hungry, desperately hungry, and her mouth is warm and her tongue is just as angry as it was a minute ago, when she was calling you a life-ruining amoral slut.  
  
Ten minutes later she pulls back and stares at you in horror.  "Shit."  
  
"Why'd you stop?" you ask.  
  
"I am not," she says, with heavy emphasis on the 'not', "fucking you in a coatroom."  
  
You burn with the fury of a libido too frequently denied.  
  
It turns out the coatroom door locks.  
  
Sollux bites your neck hard, and slides her hand into your panties, and you hold on to the coat pegs and try to stay upright, whimpering.  Your skirt is on the floor around your ankles.  Your blouse is open.  Everything is a blurred, tingling haze of lust.    
  
She slides two fingers into you, zero friction, and then the bitch yanks up, forcing you onto your toes, hips canted forward.  You're making a breathy, moany, pornographic racket - you are grossly aroused and it is the worst, best thing.  She rubs your clit with the knuckle of her thumb and breathes _exhibitionist whore_ into your ear, in the tone of voice some people might use to say _I love you._    
  
Your legs shake.  You sob.  
  
Afterwards, as she hands you your skirt and you awkwardly accept it, you pause.  "So, wait," you say.  "Are we sex friends or something?"  
  
Sollux pinches the bridge of her nose and looks like she wants to slap you again.  "Yeah," she says, after a very judicious pause and a long, measuring look.  "I guess we are."  
  
"Oh," you say.  You fix your hair, adjust your glasses.  Someone's knocking on the door.  They probably want their coat.  "That's fine, then."  
  
Sollux seems pretty incredulous, but you're pleased.  You've neatly categorized this relationship into its appropriate genus.  Fuckbuddies.  Problem solved.  
  
Except, it turns out to not be that simple.  Taxonomy cannot solve everything.  
  
The third time you have sex with Sollux Captor is immediately after midterms are out.  You've been exchanging filthy sexts for a week; you text her when you leave your last exam, telling her which party you're going to and asking what kind of liquor she wants.  
  
She tells you like fuck is she going to another frat party, and you can get your ass down to the comp lab  & bring whatever & maybe she'll see to your carnal lusts if you ask nicely.    
  
You contemplate telling her to go fuck herself, but you really kind of want to get laid and that's what having a sex friend is for, right?  Fishing for a one night Stan would be too much fucking work and you're not in the mood, so coaxing Sollux is the clear choice of action.    
  
No one else is in the lab - it's just Captor and her comp sci homework and a lot of surprisingly comfortable armchairs.  You've never been in this building before.  It feels kind of like being behind enemy lines.  Alien planet.  
  
She tells you she's coding something important, an antivirus thing for the school network.  You call her a freakish nerd, pat her on the shoulder, and get her tipsy.  
  
"Remember how you pushed me down a flight of stairs second week of term?" she asks you, knocking back her whiskey, looking kind of amused and kind of horrified.  "And I nearly broke my ankle?"  
  
"Yeah," you say, taking the bottle from her and sipping a little.  You don't like whiskey very much, but it's alcohol.  It'll do.  You can taste her chapstick on the rim, dull menthol wax.  "You talked to Fef.  I kinda overreacted.  A little."  
  
"You're really fucking psycho, though," she says.  She's not wearing a bra.  Who's the real lunatic?  
  
It's pretty warm in here, even though it's the basement floor. "Listen," you say, crossing your legs and very much _not_ staring at her chest, "I didn't know you two were lab buddies.  Easy mistake."  
  
"That's - wow, you just don't fucking get it, do you."  
  
You decide not to pitch a fit over the insult to your intelligence because Sollux Captor could think circles around you while drunk and concussed, even on a bad day, and you'd really rather just snog and fuck and then maybe head to the party you're missing.  So you drape yourself across her lap and start kissing her jawline, instead, all sweet and let's-not-fight.  "I'm so fuckin' sorry about your ankle," you murmur in your most dulcet bedroom voice.  "Are you really still pissed?"    
  
Heavily implied: are you _really_ not gonna put out?  
  
She sighs, relaxes back into her chair, puts the bottle down.  Her eyes are two different colors - she's not wearing contacts, it's a genetic thing.  You would never stoop to call her beautiful - or even particularly attractive - but she's definitely striking.    
  
She's looking at you like she's measuring something and it's a close, close call.  Eventually she smiles.  
  
"Yeah.  Furious," she says, and slides a hand between your thighs.    
  
It's an intimate picture: two girls sprawled in the same armchair.  One girl gently fingering the other to orgasm, kissing her neck and shoulders, pulling her hair loose and murmuring softly as her hips jerk.  The dim glow of computer monitors and the soft noise of cooling fans, heavy breathing, the hiss of clothes coming off.  A bottle of Jack Daniels next to a keyboard, the mouth lined with opaque gloss and light pink lipstick.    
  
Romantic as fuck - picturesque, even.  Except Sollux is telling you how awful you are, giving you a grim diagnosis of all your personal faults and neuroses, seriously, Eridan, you're a fucking basket case, and you're laughing and murmuring yeah, yeah, but you're still fuckin' me, so who's the bigger loser -  
  
You come with your face buried in the crook of her neck, breathing hard.  
  
And then for some reason you don't really wanna leave, because the party is a long fucking walk across campus, and Sollux doesn't particularly feel like doing her homework, so what ends up happening is you squash together in the same chair and watch shitty movies on her laptop until two in the morning, slowly growing more and more drunk.    
  
And it's nice.  
  
You guess that's the real problem, here.  It's nice and you don't know what to make of that.  It can't hurt to get along with the person you're soliciting for casual sex, but you're supposed to be using her for her body, not having cute sleepovers in the comp lab and gossiping about Karkat's love life.  
  
It doesn't help your uncertainty that apparently everyone else is okay with it.  Feferi emails you out of the blue:  _**Congrats on hooking such a SW-----EET gf! 38D**_   You get that email after weeks of radio silence; you hole up in your room and cry for an hour.  
  
And then you cut off all contact with Sollux for a week.  
  
It's kind of a welcome breather, at first.  You get a lot more studying done and your grades (which were starting to dip into the B-range) pop right back up to A's across the board.  Your Military History professor gushes over your essays.  The TA for your Intro To Physics class writes a little smiley face and GOOD WORK!!!! on your problem sets.    
  
You make it to the gym when Equius isn't around to silently judge you for sticking to the treadmill and the stationary bicyle, and you even hang out with Karkat a little, listening to her vent about how Dave is a fucking prick and John is a moron and Terezi is trying to drive her into an early grave, et cetera, whatever.    
  
And Vriska continues to stay far the fuck away from your radar, and that's great.  This is probably most focused week you've ever had.  
  
But you're horny as fuck.  And you don't actually want to sleep with anyone else.  
  
That's the problem.  
  
When you show up at her dorm room at eleven PM on Saturday night, nervous and miserable, she seems incredibly unimpressed.  She raps her fingernails against the doorframe, frowning.  "Hey."  
  
"Hey, Sol."  You feel far, far too awkward.  
  
"Figured you'd come crawling in eventually."  
  
"I missed you," you tell her, curt and annoyed, and she seems a little surprised.  "Are you gonna let me in, or what?"  
  
She pauses a beat too long.  
  
"... Yeah, sure."  
  
And you end up falling asleep for an hour or so in her bed, silently watching her type line after line of C++, because apparently the Captor work ethic insists on Saturday night coding benders.  It's soothing.  You don't want it to be soothing, not particularly, and you don't want to relax, but you pass out anyway.  
  
You wake up when she crawls into bed behind you and nuzzles the nape of your neck.  "Move the fuck over," she says.  
  
You yawn.  "Make me," you grumble into her pillow.  
  
"If you came over to seduce me, it's really not working."  
  
"Sorry for fucking off for a week," you hear yourself say, and you're sort of startled to discover that you mean it.  
  
"I didn't really care that much."  She sounds amused.  Unspoken:  _You're not actually that important._  
  
And that wounds your ego.  You hate being unimportant to anyone, especially the people you want to sleep with.  And you want to fuck Sollux pretty damn bad pretty damn frequently.    
  
"Really," you say, light and coy and unperturbed, and roll over to lock lips.  It's easy to go from hurt and angry to aroused, for you - both states vibrate with tension, both states insist on contact.  It's only terror that makes you want to run.  
  
This is the fourth time you have sex.  She stretches out on top of you like a warm electric blanket, kisses you deeply, blocks off the ceiling with her silhouette, slides a leg between your thighs.  It's too easy to shut your eyes and kiss her back, slide your hands around her waist, and not think about anything at all.  
  
You've been drinking too much coffee lately, because it's cold and you like to keep your hands warm walking between classes, and you take it black.  Caffeine takes hours to work its way out of your system, and you should probably be drinking more water to offset it.  
  
That is the only reason you think you would ever lie awake, when you get back to your room, until three in the morning, staring at the white-black lines of light on your wall.    
  
It has nothing to do with Sollux.  
  
You are sex friends, not _involved_ ; and you enjoy this too much to question it closely.  The time you steal from the flow of "real life" is like entering a floating world, a fantasy plane where all you have to worry about is sex.  It's so pleasant - if it's an illusion, you don't want to destroy it, and it's so sweet you just can't bear to sour it.  It's not that you can't quit it, you tell yourself - you just don't _want_ to.  
  
The next time Sollux texts you - says to meet her in the quad, and you know in a matter-of-fact way that you'll end up with your ankles locked behind her back in some corner of campus - you just look at your phone for a few minutes, and then you smile, and text her a quick yes, and you ignore the look Karkat gives you as you leave.  
  
If you're going down in flames, you guess you just don't want to know.


	2. Chapter 2

The thing about Sollux is that she really is that smart.  Most college students are posturing little assholes who bullshit their way through everything, but Sollux is different.  She isn't "smart" for social status, she's not the buzzword-dropping "floccinaucinihilipilification" breed.  She can do things, with her mind.  That's it.  She makes stuff.  If you can make shit the way Sollux makes shit, you guess, you don't really need to posture.  
  
Or study, much.  
  
It's different for you.  You have to get up early and stay up late and take your flashcards to the treadmill.  Flashcards are a non-thing for Sollux.  Her notes are incomprehensible little scribbles of geometric shapes and illegible, cramped handwriting.  
  
You didn't expect her to be staying for summer classes, and, heading up to summer break, neither of you talked about it.  You just hit her up a couple times during finals for quick stress relief.  
  
But she is.  So - although you're taking Cold War history and she's learning Python - it turns into something weird.  
  
In the back of your head you figured this... whatever-it-is, would just lose steam eventually.  You assumed that someday in the foggy future the other shoe would drop and she would quit pretending to like you.  You figured you'd part ways, pick up a summer fling or three, and go back to being sorta-strangers.  You were counting on not having to think about messy questions like "so am I gay now?" or "is it still gay if I think about dicks sometimes?"  
  
But it doesn't end or politely fade away, and you're both in the summer session in a nearly-deserted campus, and it just gets real fucking awkward.  Because all of a sudden you're not in a sea of people, you're a couple out of just a handful, and literally everyone knows you two are hooking up.  It's in their eyes, in their whispers.  You still sorta avoid each other in public, but after classes get out you end up in her summer dorm room more often than not, Monday through Friday.    
  
Feferi sends you postcards from Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.  You read them obsessively, over and over and over, but you never send him anything back.  When you sit down and try to compose something, you just don't fucking know what to say.  
  
Sollux's room is uncomfortably hot, from all the computers, and noisy with the drone of fans, and she types in an irritating, monotonous way.  
  
Just like being locked in a beehive, you think.  
  
She hangs out in her underwear.  
  
You figure you can deal with the heat.  
  
Eventually, a few weeks into summer, you stop counting the number of times you've hooked up.  
  
"You wanna come over?" she asks you, one Friday, watching you shuffle paperwork.  
  
Your mom owns a townhouse in the area, gated community, and you've been staying there.  But Sollux's family lives pretty close by, and she stays with them on the weekends.  You don't know what to make of her suggestion, or the raised eyebrow.  Is this a sex thing?  You're not sure.  
  
"Like... to study?" you hazard.  Study buddies.  How quaint.  Grade school levels of hand-holding cute.    
  
She blinks, adjusts her eyeglasses.  She has some very faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.  You try to count them sometimes.  
  
"Yeah, sure," she says.  "Maybe watch a movie afterwards.  Make pasta.  Talk about Karkat's relationship problems."  
  
... Okay, maybe it's not a sex thing, but it's still pretty dubious.  
  
"Sure, I guess.  You want a ride?"  
  
"Yeah, my parents are out of town until tomorrow, that'd be great."  
  
\- no, wait, this could be a sex thing after all.  You don't know what to believe, but you suspect the shit out of this conniving sex friend.  She is super suspicious.  Especially with the insouciant grin and the "I know something you don't know" look in her eyes.  
  
You don't wanna drive up to her dorm because that's way too fucking conspicuous, so you make her lug her laundry hamper and heavy backpack out to the far-more-clandestine parking lot.  She doesn't comment on this inconvenience.  Sometimes, as you act out the scenes of this torrid dalliance, you wonder who's ashamed of whom.  
  
It's a short-ish drive, if a tense one.  To your slight surprise (you were expecting some sort of Virtuous Poor run-down thing with a wooden rocking chair on the porch) the house she lives in is kind of nice.  Gentle, sloping lawn.  Large, insulated windows.  Slate roof.  Brick chimney.  No car in the driveway, but you bet her parents drive something decent.  
  
And it's nice indoors.  Air conditioned, plush carpet, hardwood flooring.  You help her carry her stuff in.  
  
"Living room," she says, pointing vaguely.  "We have Netflix, so, just pick something."  
  
You are a little confused that apparently no studying will be taking place.  Was this just a movie night, thinly disguised as a study session, thinly diguised as an invitation for casual sex?  Your head is spinning.  You feel flushed.  Fish out of water.  What's going on?  
  
There's a wide couch, a low coffee table suitable for studying (??? what does it _mean_ ), a massive flatscreen, some potted plants by the window.  It looks out on a backyard thick with trees.  The place seems oddly silent - insulated, somehow.  You hear Sollux start the washing machine, and hear her walking closer.  Back to you.  Your pulse is racing. You turn towards the door and when Sollux actually gets there you're doing a top-notch impression of a deer trapped in some approaching headlights.  Maybe an approaching train.  Fuck.  
  
"... Sit down?" she suggests, frowning a little and heading over to the TV, reaching behind a stack of DVDs for a remote.    
  
Awkwardly, you do as you're told.  
  
Eventually you settle on watching The Notebook, because neither of you have seen it and you both recall, in a vague misty sense, that it's a Good Movie.  It sounds like a kind of scholastic thing - notebooks, study party, good call, right?  Only it really, really isnt.  It's some kinda romance flick for girls. Romance flicks make you supremely bored, unless you're watching them with Karkat's running commentary.  
  
And it's difficult to pay attention to the movie with Sollux sitting right there, with her lips pursed in mild disapproval and her legs folded, and the way her eyes go half-lidded when she's staring at the screen, and you can sort of smell whatever soap she uses, and it smells kind of good, and a little like her sweat, and you're fidgeting too much and she notices you staring.  
  
She licks her lips.  You realize: this was absolutely a sex thing.  
  
"Can we maybe make out instead of watchin' this?" you murmur.  Your voice feels too thick for your throat.  
  
Sol develops that smug look of hers, again, and tilts your chin with her fingertips.  "Why, Ampora.  I thought you'd never ask."  
  
Witty banter, great, just what you... It's so warm, in here.  Her mouth is so soft.  
  
You're hesitant and slow until she starts to pull away, and then you're pulling at her shoulders; she laughs and straddles your lap, plucking your glasses off, and you have to lift your head to kiss her, you have to bare your neck in a long tender arch, and for some reason that small measure of vulnerability knocks the sense out of you.  You blush like crazy.  Your fingers are dancing around the hem of her blouse.  Terror and exhilaration hum through your body as you slide you hands under the fabric.  She makes an encouraging noise, wraps her arms around your shoulders, sticks her tongue a little further into your mouth.  You feel like you're floating.  
  
She takes her shirt off, unhooks her bra, starts to unbutton your shirt in an easy, methodical way.  Like it's no big deal.  Behind her some shit is happening on the screen but you can barely tell the TV exists.  
  
Frotting and getting fingered is one thing, but you think, hey, fuck it, she's gotten you off so many times - you know how to masturbate just fine - maybe you won't fuck it up - maybe you'll be good at this - you slide your fingertips over the crease in her denim shorts.  She makes this noise.  
  
Something melts in the pit of your stomach.  
  
You finger her slowly, hand inside her panties until she moans, bites your neck, and, it's different, when it's someone else, when someone else is coming, because you can feel the way her body slams down around your fingers, and it's -  
  
She snarls and kisses you and you feel like you're burning up.  She peels your clothes off, she murmurs these little things you barely catch, most of them expletives, you're so dizzy, fucking hell, you just did that, you made Sollux -  Half aware of what you're doing, you raise your fingers to your lips, and lick them off.  Some part of you thinks that this should be gross.  It very much isn't.  
  
And, Sollux watches you do it.  You can't describe the look in her eyes, but you are reminded of a shark scenting blood.  
  
She pushes you down and holds your hips still and puts her mouth on you, and your whole skin is screaming, but you can barely breathe.  Your mind has dissolved.  You're sobbing.  
  
On screen, the credits are rolling.  
  
It's overwhelming.  
  
After you catch your breath, she leads you by the hand to her bathroom, and you take turns washing the sweat off, tidy little five-minute solitary showers.  That was - it was a little too intimate.  You have no idea what happened in the movie - you think, to yourself, she must have brought you home to fuck you, that was what your fuckbuddy was going for, imagine that, but you don't know what that means.  Bringing you home.  It's personal in the way a dorm room - or the back seat of your Audi, or a cheap hotel, is... very much not. 

The places she kissed you still feel warm.  
  
She watches you get dressed again in her bedroom like she's enjoying the view - you have to borrow panties, yours are kind of.  Slimy, you guess, is the word you would use.  If you had to pick a word.  
  
"You're leerin'," you mumble.  
  
"Hmm," she says, in an agreeable way, and continues to leer.  
  
You're still blushing.  "Don't you have homework, Sol?"  
  
"Huh?  Yeah, I have some shit to get done."  
  
"Well, so do I," you say, lamely, feeling very peevish.  "So I'm gonna start mine, if you don't exactly mind."  
  
Her expression says: _It's Friday night, you loser'._   Aloud she says:  "Ugh.  Fine.  If you insist.  I'm gonna order pizza, though.  I don't feel like cooking."  
  
You get about halfway done with your essay on the cultural ramifications of M.A.D., or, mutually assured destruction, and the policy decisions the United States made as a result of Soviet paranoia, when you realize Sollux isn't typing anything, and glance up at her, across the coffee table.  She's staring at you, in a soft way.  
  
You wonder how long she's been staring, and flick an eraser at her, sticking out your tongue.  
  
Sollux snorts, tosses it back to you, and goes back to her coding homework, rattling off line after line in a steady, absorbed rhythm.  From time to time she flips through her textbook to look something up, but one hand always stays on the keyboard.  She seems relaxed.  Peaceful.  The late afternoon sunlight is pouring through the window, a soft pastel orange-gold against her skin.  Her features are softened; her eyelashes and lips seem to glitter.  
  
You find yourself staring.  
  
That is the moment you realize Sollux is actually really, really hot.  
  
And you think you know, now, who's ashamed of whom.  
  
So you look back down at your essay-in-progress, and after a few minutes of dull, blank staring at the dull, blank page, you pick up your pen, and resume. 

Dinner is pleasant.  Cordial.    
  
After walking you to your car she glances down the road, and then kisses you goodbye.  In a soft and quiet way, you decide to shut your eyes and enjoy it.  Who cares that she checked for observers?  The way her tongue moves makes your knees weak, makes your head spin. "Hey, next time, let's watch something we like, okay?" she says, smiling.  
  
"Next time," you say.  "Like, next Friday."  
  
"My parents will be home, but.  Late," she says.  
  
"So I can get out before they're back."  
  
"... Or you could stay for dinner," she suggests, pinching your face in a scolding way.  "You know.  It's not like it's weird to have friends over for dinner."  
  
... You don't know what the fuck that means, either.  "Sure thing," you say.  "Friday.  Yeah.  Nothin' awkward about it."  
  
The rest of your summer plays out like that, hot and intense and a little too intimate and distant at once.    
  
You make out a lot after classes during the week, frot lazily on your shitty dorm beds, and on the weekends she takes you home and fucks you proper.  And then you have dinner with her family and you pretend, like a real diplomat, that you didn't just fuck their daughter on their living room couch.  Apart from a little bit of nervous tension it's not too difficult to act suave, keep yourself collected, act like a model citizen.    
  
You've been dragged to uncomfortable dinners by your mother since you were six, and at least no one at the Captor house is actively trying to humiliate you, or waiting for you to pick up the wrong fork.  It's just... weird.  
  
And then you have Saturday and Sunday alone at your empty house, and a growing little pile of unanswered mail from Feferi.  
  
You email Karkat about some vague, unspecified emotional problems you're having, like, you're trying to figure stuff out but you're not really sure about anything, you know, Kar, stuff, it's just, growing up is kinda complicated?  And sometimes you email Kanaya, too, but they're never online.  It's summer.  They're busy.  
  
One time you and Sollux cut it a little close, and you have to shower alone at home.  
  
You don't know why you cry.  
  
You figure it's probably not important.  
  
"Listen," Sollux says to you, in her bedroom, as you gradually unpeel yourself from her body and try not to give into the moronic urge to cuddle her.  The fading summer light streams in through the venetian blinds.  Her fingers run through your hair.  Her room is ninety percent bookshelves, five percent closet, five percent bed.  "I don't care if you fuck other people."  
  
"... Huh?"  You don't lift your head up.  You don't trust your facial expression.  
  
"Semester starts in a week and a half," Sollux says, calm and firm.  "You know.  Back to the meet market.  I'm going to be really busy, I don't expect you to wait on me."  
  
Meet market, meat market, Vienna sausagefest, you think to yourself, and then you wonder why that information didn't occur to you before Sollux brought it up.  
  
"Right." You swallow, and wonder why you feel bruised.  
  
"If you want to hook up with me again, though, get tested first."  
  
You make a weird, strangled laugh-like noise into the sheets.  
  
Her hand stills in your hair.  "I'm serious, Eridan."  
  
It takes you a minute to get your voice working properly.  "Sol - you know STD results take, like, two fuckin' weeks, I can't wait that long."  The silence is harsh.  You swallow, again.  Your eyes feel very dry.  You don't cry in front of people, it's just not done.  "It's too much fuckin' effort."  
  
"... Impatient, huh."  Her tone is flat.  Chilly.  
  
"Yeah," you say.  "Yeah, I guess I'm.   Guess I'm just gonna have to not fuck anyone else."  
  
The silence is longer.  "... You're so lazy it's kind of hilarious," she says.  It might be your imagination, but you'd say her voice is about ten degrees warmer.  
  
Your face stops trying to collapse in on itself, so with a bit of effort you compose a cute, flirty little smile, and prop yourself up, chin resting in one hand, leaning your weight on an elbow.  "I got a lot of other personality faults, Sol, I'm real tough to figure out."  You bat your perfectly mascara'ed eyelashes at her.  It would be a shame if your eyes watered, you look so great today.  
  
"You mean you're a pain in the ass," Sollux says, smirking down at you.  You give her an exaggerated little pout, and she messes your hair up a little more before standing, rolling her shoulders, and grabbing a towel on her way to the bathroom.  
  
"Hey," you say.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Summer classes are over on Wednesday, do you wanna meet up for just, like, whatever?  Next Friday?"  
  
Sollux pauses.  She does not turn to face you.  "... I've got to go get my textbooks."  
  
"... Right."  
  
"Before the rush."  
  
"Yeah.  I still gotta register for shit, thanks ever so for the reminder."  
  
"You should get that done tonight, the website is up."  
  
"Roger that," you agree, wanting to just sort of crawl into a hole, and not surface until your heart has recovered.  
  
"... Then we can get books together," she says, glancing back at you.  She's smiling a little.  
  
"... Oh," you say.  You think you feel your ears go red.  
  
"You've got a car," she reminds you, like she's teasing.  
  
"I'm also fuckin' incomparable company, let's be honest with each other," you tell her, and stretch.  What's with the tension in your back?  You were so relaxed, not five fucking minutes ago.  
  
"Oh, I can think of a few things to compare you to," Sollux says, and makes a really obscene gesture with two fingers and her tongue, and you snicker and hurl a pillow at her retreating back. Her parents will be home in an hour.  They're bringing Chinese.  
  
... You can live with this.  
  
You tell yourself that, over and over and over, under the showerhead, and you don't let yourself cry.  Well, not audibly, anyway.  
  
In a few weeks the hot weather melts away like dew, and then it's autumn again - the leaves won't turn for a while, but it's starting to smell like fall, in the air.  There's a subtle hint of the post-equinox seasonal shift, a certain chilliness in the evenings; the quality of the sunlight changes, the angles shift.  Dark comes sooner.  
  
You remember that summer through flavors and sense impressions:  the bittersweet tang of Sollux on your lips, the smell of takeout and the sound of Sollux's parents talking, the feeling of couch cushions, bedsheets beneath your bare skin, muscles tensing under Sollux's skin; the hiss of the showerhead, and the diluted, faint salinity of your own tears. 

"Eri! I missed you so much!  Can you be- _reef_   we're sophomores now?" says Feferi, bright and beaming in crisp fresh clothes and waiting for you at your new dorm, lingering on the steps, waving.  He's gotten a little tan.  He moves like he always did, fluid and graceful as a cresting wave. 

You feel the old familiar ache.  You wonder how you ever forgot it.  You wonder why it seems different, now, why you feel so strange and hopeless, why his arms around your shoulders and the easy sound of his laugh are not enough to make you happy, anymore.  You wonder when you changed. 

Sollux really is as smart as she seems, and she's gonna do something great with her life.  Probably a genius.  Written in the stars.

But you...  you're not so bright, after all. 


	3. Chapter 3

You guess you're not sure when it stopped being a big fucking deal and started being a habit, the whole "going on sorta dates with your sex friend" thing.  Like, before you really knew it, you had gotten used to it, and it's mystifying.    
  
However it happened, Friday nights are now sacrosanct.  When you were registering for fall classes you arranged stuff so that you'd only have one class on Fridays - WW2 history, starts at eight and runs until eleven.  It turns out that Sollux has no Friday classes whatsoever.  You did not discuss this with each other beforehand.  It just seemed like the natural thing to do, when you were slouched in front of your desktop and clicking on courses, cross-checking with your degree requirements.  It seemed natural to make time for her.    
  
This is a comfortable rut and you don't want to mess with the weekend routine.  It's a pretty simple one; she meets you in the farthest parking lot after class gets out and you snog in the back seat of your car until lunch, and after shuffling into the cafeteria you sit at the same table as Karkat and sometimes Fef, and then your afternoons flourish out into Friday night.  
  
If there's a thing going on - a campus event or a local theater performance or a zany little firebreather troupe in town, for some reason - and the thing is on Friday, you don't go without asking Sollux.  When she says she'd rather not, you end up hanging out with her, instead, more often than not; but you do manage to drag her out of her room most of the time.  Pretty weird, when you think about it.  It's not like you're dating.  Well - okay, you go on dates and you're exclusive with each other so far, but it's not like you're, well, official.  She doesn't even have a facebook - QED.  
  
On the brisk early-winter weekend before midterms she makes a day trip with you to the armory museum - full suits of European and Middle Eastern armor, medieval weaponry, history lectures, fencing classes.  It was her suggestion - she thrust a brochure at you all, engarde!  And you were kinda agog and suspicious of her motives, and all that, and she cajoled you into taking public transport, and so you bundled up to wait at the bus stop with your elbows bumping, squinting against the frigid wind.  (She refuses to share your scarf.  Choking hazard, she says.  You assume this means she's still ashamed of you.)  
  
She's acting really nonchalant and keeping her hands off, so you're pretty sure this isn't a sexy field trip.  Like, seventy percent sure.  
  
You ride the scarcely-peopled one PM Saturday bus together, hands in your pockets, thighs flush; quietly bantering back and forth, bitching a whole laundry list of first world problems, and as you complain about the brewing temperature and quality of the organic coffee grounds at the campus cafe - how their reusable filters only work right the first few times - she tugs her hand out of her pocket and slides it into yours.  
  
It's pretty fucking gay.  Especially for someone who's allergic to public displays of affection.  
  
" - the, the.  Uh. The water vapor," you stumble.  "It fucks up the shitty filters they use and it lets, the, the grains -" (she's lacing your fingers together with hers) "- go through.  Through the weave.  The, um, the fabric stretches."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Wow.  You've got it so hard," she says, squeezing your hand.  "You poor little thing."  
  
Your ears are red - no doubt heating up after the wind chill.  You burrow your chin into your scarf and scowl, tentatively squeezing back.  "You know, from time to time, Sol, a girl might think you were makin' fun of her."  
  
"No shit, really?"  
  
She's got a perfect deadpan, and she's rubbing her thumb in small circles over your knuckle, and lately every time she touches you you feel this strange throb in the pit of your stomach.  It isn't arousal - not yet, anyway.  It's just the fact of being touched by a body your skin recognizes, familiar atoms swapping familiar electrons like kids passing bubblegum mouth-to-mouth.    
  
A body that knows yours.  Familiarity.  
  
You're only holding hands, but your heart misbehaves anyway.  
  
"Mm, yeah, you got this rude way of sayin' things and a downright saucy demeanor and a lady just assumes."  
  
"Wow.  You caught me.  Bring me up on charges of premediated sauciness."  
  
"Like, if we're gonna go ahead and try to quantify these outrageous sauce levels, you're at least a bar wench.  Maybe even a french maid."  
  
"I'm a fucking sous chef, you plebe," she says, in a gorgeous parry that would be meaningless out of context, but which crystallizes into a running joke the moment she says it.  You've got a couple of those, actually - you've built up a little lover's vocabulary of buzzwords and tonal shifts that are only funny to the pair of you.  
  
Because you are in love with her.  
  
... Fuck.  
  
"...  Some sous chef you make. You can't even cook," you stammer.  
  
"Incorrect.  I make a mean bowl of cereal."  
  
"Jesus.  That's not even funny, it's pathetic," you say, recovering your aplomb.  You are not sure if you're commenting on the cereal joke, or if you are providing a succinct description of your state of matter.  Who can say? Not you.  You are not keen on examining yourself for any more nasty surprises.  
  
She snorts, and grinds the heel of her clogs into the toe of your closest boot.  In an affectionate way.  
  
The museum is warm, and suffused with artificial sunlight.  You flit from display to display like you're floating on a cloud, like a child in a toy store, vibrating with excitement.  The collection is vast.  A whole shelf of caltrops - a set of greaves and a helmet depicting a triptych from the Morte d'Arthur - pikes, lances, javelins, full jousting armor.  A shield engraved with the coat of arms of Richard the Third. An authentic Mongolian bow, made of curved animal horn, horsehair string coiled up beside it; three arrowheads and one preserved, fletched arrow.  A breastplate with a bullet hole in it.  
  
A pace or two behind, nose buried in a brochure, Sollux follows you.  A couple of times, mid-spiel, you think you turn and catch her watching you with a weird look in her eyes.  But you can't be sure.  
  
She doesn't tease you once.  
  
You get hot cocoa together on your way back, walking to the Starbucks closest to campus.  She likes hers salted.  You prefer yours bittersweet.  A soft, molten heat has collected in the pit of your stomach.  Is this contentment?  Happiness?  Maybe it's just that you're warm, and it's freezing out.  
  
You sit together at a small table, across from each other, and warm your fingers up by clutching your drinks.  
  
"Thank god we went on the weekend," she says, wrinkling her nose.  "Nice and quiet.  We managed to dodge all the class trips."  
  
"You don't like kids, Sol?"    
  
That was a stupid thing to ask, you realize after the fact.  She's giving you a weird look.  
  
"Uh... Not really, no?"  
  
Oh my god, why did you say that?  "You're, you're so patient, though, you'd be great wi -"  
  
"It's a moot point," she interrupts, and then catches herself, forcing herself into polite neutrality.  A tension emerges in her forehead, the set of her jaw.  "I don't like them, I don't have to be around them, they don't have to be around me, it's not a big deal."  
  
"... Yeah," you murmur.  Something inside of you is in knots.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, what kind of bridezilla brings up kids with a fuckbuddy?  Are you fucking nuts?  
  
Sollux brushes her bangs away from her forehead, eyes carefully blank.  "Do you?  Like kids, I mean."  
  
"I... Well.  I always thought I'd have them," you say.  
  
"... Uh," she says, trailing off.  It's already dark outside, but the windows face the street; a steady blur of headlights, traffic lights, and the glitter of spreading frost.  
  
"I mean, I guess I just expected it, it's not like I had my heart set on it," you fumble.  You don't even know if you're lying.  Your chest feels tense, like someone's squeezing your lungs.  "Women in my family are just sorta expected to settle down with a nice man and have a few kids, it's what I thought I'd end up doin', too, there was never - I mean - there's always adoption if -"  
  
"It's not a big deal," Sollux repeats, waving aside the explanation she didn't really want, and you go quiet.  She forces a smile onto her rigid features.  The cafe light is soft, honey-colored.  "I mean.  It's not like we're soulmates."  
  
Paralysis seizes you for a moment.  You think you hear the soft, falling-ash noise of a heart breaking.  You think it's yours.  
  
"... Right," you say, putting your cup down.  There is a weird hollow quality to your voice that you don't like.  The part of you that remembers propriety and the choir lessons corrects for it, relaxing your throat, loosening your jaw.  
  
"I mean... look, what we have is nice, right?  So why bother worrying about stuff like that?"  
  
"Why bother," you echo.  
  
"It doesn't have to be an issue," she concludes, gesturing with one hand and holding her nearly-empty cup of cocoa in the other.  "So I don't want to - let's not make it an issue."  
  
"Sure thing, Sol," you tell her, and you dig a smile up from some frostbitten corner of your soul that she never wormed her way into, and which still knows how to fake it.  "Uh.  Hey, you ready for midterms?  I still gotta borrow flashcards from Kan, but I think I'm set."  
  
You let her chatter and puncutate your silence with murmurs, sips from your mug, canned laughter at the appropriate moments.  Your heart is pumping ice; her words rush over you like radio static.  You don't know what kind of witty banter you pull out of your ass.  You could do dinner-with-senators charming in your sleep, thanks to your mother; the glue that was keeping you adhered to reality has come loose.  
  
Wrapped within a numb, desaturated blur you think to yourself: _again._   Again, you have fallen head-over-heels for someone genuinely amazing (one in seven billion, someone truly special) who does not intend to keep you.    
  
Your life is a running joke.  
  
And this is a game you always lose.  
  
... You feel kinda sick.  
  
When she presses a kiss to your cheek before awkwardly walking off in the direction of her dorm, you can barely see her go.  
  
"Hey.  You look like shit," Karkat says when you stumble back into the common room, putting down her bowl of popcorn.  Her stoner friend is blinking at the animation on the TV screen - they're watching Disney movies.  "Did you pick another fight with Sollux, or -"  
  
"No," you say.  Your voice isn't coming out right.  "And keep your nose outta my business."  
  
Karkat frowns.  "Cut the attitude, shitheel.  Are you sick?"  
  
"... It's nothing," you mumble.  "I'm fucking fine, Kar."  
  
She doesn't believe you, but she's in the middle of some quality time with her juggalo life partner and shitty princess films.  You make the decision not to comfort you easier on her by locking yourself in your room.    
  
When you look at it calmly the simple fact of the matter is that Sollux can do better.    
  
Of course she intends to break off this fuckbuddy arrangement someday - it caught you off guard and it shouldn't have caught you off guard, because that implies a little more self-deception than you're comfortable with.  You don't know when you started hoping for something you're never going to get, and you don't know when you let yourself get so attached.  Fuck.  Why are you so stupid?  Why do you fall for the same shit every fucking time?  
  
Later - at around one in the morning - Karkat knocks on your door and you begrudge her entrance.  "Hey... your light was on, so.  Are you sure you're okay?"  
  
"Yeah.  Probably," you say.  You've been pacing, you're too wound up to sleep.  
  
Karkat develops the aura of a suffering saint and the facial cast of an angry pugilist, attitudes with which you are unfortunately familiar.  "Okay, two things.  One: you're a really shitty liar.  Second: I'm sorry you had a fight with your girlfriend, but please go the fuck to sleep, you're keeping people awake and it's exam week."    
  
You mumble sullen acquiescence, and end up crying in the shower.  
  
After that Saturday you go right back to business as usual with Sollux, and you're happy enough; but you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You try not to think about it too much, but you remember, every now and then, that however secure this seems - however safe she makes you feel - this is a temporary state of affairs.  
  
And you don't want to make contingency plans or shortlist revenge fucks because, you realize with fascinated horror, you cannot imagine your life without Sollux in it.  You get the feeling that a joke is being made at your expense, considering all those times you drove out to the shooting range and pretended she was a target.  It's kind of funny how you used to wish she were dead, and kind of really not funny at all.  


* * *

  
She asks you over, when her finals are done - you turn down Fef's invitation to come out clubbing, and text a picture to Karkat of an insinuating sock on a door handle that you keep in your phone's photo folder at all times before turning it off.  When you finish your clandestine journey to her dormitory she presses you down on the couch in her deserted common room, sprawls on top of you like a blanket, kisses your neck and jaw over and over again in pleased distraction while she marathons some show called Caprica.  "Borrowed the first season from Roxy," she says.  
  
"Who's Roxy?"  You sound like a paranoid nag - like a typical suspicious girlfriend.  You feel like that a lot, lately.  
  
Sollux raises an eyebrow at you, leaving your neck unattended, and you try to school your features into a nonchalant, maybe-I'm-asking-because-I-want-to-replace-you expression.  She does not appear convinced.  Or impressed.  
  
"Roxy Lalonde.  Rose's sister.  You know, the lush.  A year above us."  
  
"I saw her at a couple of parties," you recall, sifting through your fuzzy memories.  "Before I stopped goin'."  
  
Sollux hums, presses an absentminded kiss to your throat.  "She's pretty smart.  Anyway, we're in comp sci together."  
  
"Wow.  Fun."  Your deadpan is scathing.  "I'm _so_ jealous."  
  
Sollux snorts, and nips your jaw with her teeth.  "Real high praise from a technologically illiterate pinup.  You'd like her, though. She shoots stuff for fun."  
  
"So much in common," you murmur - the sweet rush at being called a pinup dies sour in the back of your throat once "illiterate" dissolves on your tastebuds.  Great.  Eridan 2.0, the model that can keep up with Sollux's computer nonsense.  And you're pretty sure you remember Roxy being a natural blonde, and highly gifted in the chest department, and you frown at the ceiling while Sollux leaves a hickey on your neck. "Maybe you should trade me in."  
  
Sollux laughs.  "Don't sulk," she says, and presses her mouth against yours.  She fumbles with the remote, and the screen freezes.  It's a weekend.  The semester's practically over.  No one's around to be impressed by your capacity for moral outrage.  
  
So you grumble and squirm a little, when she nudges your knees apart and leaves more hickeys on your collarbones and cleavage, and you shut your eyes and cling to her hair and you let her make you howl and thrash.  It's hard to sulk when Captor is eating you out.  
  
And it's hard to keep up a good, solid fight with Sol when you're so invested in not getting dumped.  Like, fuck this relationship shit, for real.  Love is a dirty business, run by crooks.  You should quit while you're ahead.  "Should" is a funny word, though, in that it no longer carries any authority with you outside of the set of actions that might preserve your relationship.    
  
You walk by Vriska on campus sometimes, and although he pointedly ignores you, you barely even blink.  It doesn't matter anymore.  He never mattered like Sollux matters.  Vriska had you wrapped around his little finger; Sollux is the air you gulp and the vise around your lungs.  
  
Every day you remember you're in blind freefall, and every sundown you think you're just that much closer to the ground.    
  
It's nearly spring.  You're nearly a junior.  College won't last forever.

So you lock the door of your room and lie alone on your back in the dark, and spread your arms out on the black-violet sheets.  In the drowsy haze of fading consciousness you pretend to yourself that you're flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what is pacing how did this get longer


End file.
